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Why we celebrate (continued)
Blackburn was important to the events, but his perspective was that of an administrator. Henry "Hank" Black was the editor of the Crimson White in the summer of 1963. He is also one of the 40 pioneers and he's had a few interesting experiences of his own. As a student he had the opportunity to gauge student opinions on the integration. "Most people did not want the campus integrated, but at the same time most people understood that the court was ordering this, that it was a matter of law, and they certainly didn't want the campus disrupted in the way that it had been in 1956," Black said. There was a definite fear that violence would erupt, Black said, but "the predominate attitude was one of being put out by the degree of preparation." "For example, the student registration ID cards were issued off campus so they wouldn't have this big mob scene during registration. They did not want an accumulation of people anywhere on campus," he said. The campus itself was cordoned off, and students couldn't get onto campus without a student ID. Police surrounded the perimeter, and emotions were high. "It was a time to shake in your boots. There were Klan rallies going on just before the stand. There were statements being made by both Klan and others as to what might happen if the integration were successful," Black said. Then there was the media attention. "The media was interviewing anybody they could find .... [They] ran out of people to interview, because the choreography was in place so long. It was the typical mass media situation," Black said. "On the day of the stand in the schoolhouse door there were masses of media corralled in a particular designated area and a few people inside," he said. As a newsman himself, Black was able to see things from the inside out. The Crimson White put out a special edition two days before the stand as a way to let everyone know what was happening. The special edition included a letter from William Faulkner, written to a student in 1956 after the Autherine Lucy riots. Faulkner told the student, who had asked what should be done about the situation, that the best thing to do was fight for integration. "We must have as many people as possible on the side of us who believe in individual freedom. There are seventeen million Negroes. Let us have them on our side," Faulkner wrote. It also included a message from Dean Blackburn asking that students obey the curfew that was in place and a set of eight ground rules set forth by the administration. One rule forbid groups of more than three people on campus, another told students to follow their normal routines and another asked that all rumors be reported to the dean. Some of the headlines for the special edition were "All-Out Peace Effort Sees Campus Guarded," "Over 300 Newsmen To Get Red-Carpet Treatment by UA" and, heading an article which told about meetings between students at UA and Malone and Hood, "Girl ‘Quiet'; Boy ‘Congenial' Students Say of Negroes." Black himself attended those meetings, which began several months before the integration and took place at Stillman College. He described the meetings as secretive. They were intended to make the transition easier for the two students who would undoubtedly have a difficult time adjusting. "We talked to them about the kinds of professors they might have, the kinds of accommodations they might have. We tried to give them some idea of what they were getting into," Black said. When it came time for the actual event, Black said students heaved sighs of relief when it appeared that everything had gone as planned. "For a very few days [after the stand] there was still the tension and certainly there was still the security presence. Only later in the summer did the state troopers leave, although a smaller force stayed on campus," Black said. After that things began to return to normal. The ground rules stayed in effect a little longer and there were no pictures allowed in the classrooms at first, but gradually the feeling that the campus was a pressure cooker drained away. "It was a thrilling time to be a student journalist, to see history played out in front of your eyes, to actually participate a bit. Although I always felt myself as an observer in a journalistic sense, yet I had some access to the process that made me feel a part of it," Black said. It's undeniably true that the combination of all of these events and experiences adds up to a moment of great historical significance. That in itself would be enough to celebrate the "Opening Doors" events, but that's not all the organizers had in mind. Samory Pruitt, chair of the planning committee for the "Opening Doors" events, can shed some light onto the reasoning behind the events. "[June 11, 1963,] was a crossroads for [UA.] Had it not made that particular decision, we would not have started on this particular path. [The celebration is] not necessarily marking all the negative thing s that particularly come with Alabama and Wallace standing in schoolhouse door, and all of those implications. It's really to point to the fact that at that point in the university's history, it made a decision that everybody, regardless of race, should be afforded opportunities, and collectively the community, the students who were seeking admission, the federal government, they all agreed on that particular principal. That's really what we're trying to highlight," Pruitt said. He outlined three goals for the events: to recognize the people who were involved, to highlight their actions and how they facilitated the integration and to make the events relative to another generation of people. In the end, the events at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963, were important not only because of what did happen, but what might have happened. Yes, everything went smoothly and Alabama became the last state to desegregate its public schools. The situation, however, included all the volatile elements of a massive Civil Rights tragedy: Men with guns, a Southern governor with a dedication to his constituency, a United States president who had to make things right, and two students entering a hostile environment with the goal of obtaining a degree from the University of Alabama. Five months later that president was shot on national television, 20 years later that governor renounced his segregationist past and 40 years later we're celebrating the events of that hot summer day, because it's important to remember what happened and what might have happened. As Clark writes in the last sentence of his book, describing the day Autherine Lucy Foster finally received her degree from the university, "It was a day to celebrate." |
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